Black Lotus 5

Back in June of 2011, I wrote an article documenting my first Black Lotus alter. Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough to complete three more. Today, we make that number five.

Recently, I’ve been working on a special project with the owner of CoolStuffInc (the company that sponsors this very site) Jerry Sunkin. The project in question is a complete set of Art Nouveau–themed Power Nine. Art Nouveau (French for “new art”) is a decorative art style characterized by elegant, flowing lines, floral motifs, and patterns. While popular among a multitude of artists between 1890 and 1910, the style’s chief representative was Alphonse Mucha. In my eyes, when it comes to Nouveau, there’s no beating Mucha. He’s the lone artist I reference when emulating the style.

My first Lotus was also Nouveau-themed, so I really wanted to go above and beyond with this one to demonstrate how much I’ve grown over the past two years. More than that, because the Nouveau style is some of my most popular work, I felt it was a perfect opportunity to show in detail what goes into producing these elaborate pieces.

Just around two months ago, I developed a short animation that was capable of doing that. The process is simple. Cut the painting time into small intervals of a few minutes, take a scan of the card, and then put everything together in Photoshop. I liked where the original animation was going, but like most things I do, I wanted to go more ambitious. Whereas I took around thirty scans before, I wanted to take at least double that many this time.

Ultimately, I well exceeded my goal, taking over one hundred and twenty scans in three- to five-minute intervals. The actual painting took around eight to ten hours, and the documenting process extended that to three days. And now, I present the results to you.

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